If you experience problems with FontLab 7 or our other apps, please contact the FontLab support  team and report the problems. This helps us fix the problem fast, so we can deliver an improved version of our app to you as soon as possible. Even more importantly, contact us if you experience any problem that leads to a crash, or that you think is a bug.  

When you describe the problem, please include steps to reproduce it, and attach any valuable information, such as font files (both source and exported, if applicable), screen recordings and/or screenshots. Only our support team and engineers will see the attachments you send. We will review your report, and we’ll contact you if we need more information or when we have a solution.

Reporting a problem 

Contact FontLab support
  1. Go to support.fontlab.com and click the red Contact FontLab support button, or click the button above.
  2. If you’re not logged in into our support site, you need to log in. If you’ve contacted FontLab support before, use the same login and password that you used on our support site (not the same login/password as is used on our forum or store). You can also use an existing Google, Facebook or Twitter account to log in. Or you can click Sign up with us and create an account on our support site.
  3. When you’re logged in, you can create a ”ticket” (which is a single report) for the problem. If you want to report several different problems, please create one ticket for every problem.

Create a ticket

  1. In the Subject field, enter a short description of the problem. Please use English, even if you’re not a good English speaker.
  2. In the Reason for contact dropdown, choose Technical Support.
  3. In the Type of issue dropdown, choose Problem report. If the app crashes, choose Product crashes.
  4. In the Your operating system dropdown, choose your platform, and then the version. In the next two fields, enter more info about your system.
  5. In the App by FontLab dropdown, choose the program that causes the problem, for example FontLab 7.
  6. Enter the build number of the app. This is the last part of the version number in the app’s About box. To open the about box on macOS, choose the app menu (FontLab 7), on Windows, choose the Help menu. Then choose About app (e.g. About FontLab 7). The version number may look like 7.1.5.7540 — then the build number is 7540. Also enter the platform suffix from the About box

Fill out and submit the report

  1. In the Your message to us field, describe the problem — see Describing the problem below for guidance.
  2. Add attachments — See Adding attachments below for guidance.
  3. When you have written the description and added the important attachments, click Submit. Wait for a while and you should see a green box that says Your ticket has been created. You can now wait for our response.
  4. If the report was not sent, scroll up to check if you have filled out all fields correctly. A red * will show you which fields are mandatory.

Describing the problem

When you describe the problem, please include steps to reproduce it. For example, a good problem description may be: 

  1. Open the attached VFC file.
  2. Open the glyph "A" in Glyph window.
  3. Select the top two nodes.
  4. Choose Contour > Simplify — the app crashes.
  5. The crash report is attached.

If the problem is not easy to reproduce, try to recall as many details as possible about what you were doing when the problem occurred. The more specific you are, the better. 

Adding attachments

Collect files

Collect all files that can help us solve the problem into one folder on your computer:

  • Font files: Always include the working documents (VFC, VFJ, VFB etc.). If you opened existing fonts, also include the original fonts. If the problem is with exported fonts (OTF, TTF etc.), also include them.
  • Crash logs: See Locating crash logs below.
  • Screenshots: See Making screenshots below.
  • Screen recordings: See Making screen recordings below.

Prepare the Zip

Give the folder a readable name. We recommend a name like 2020-08-27-yourname-fontlab7.zip where 2020-08-27 is the current date — but you can use any file name.

Then, ZIP the folder. On macOS, Ctrl+click the folder in Finder and choose Compress “folder name”. On Windows, right-click the folder, choose Send to and then Compressed (zipped) folder, or use 7-Zip or a similar app.

Add or upload the Zip

There are several ways to add attachments to your report:

  1. You can put all the relevant files in one ZIP file on your computer, click the Attach link at the bottom of the problem report form, choose Attach a file and choose the ZIP file. This works for ZIPs that are smaller than 15 MB.
  2. If you have Dropbox, you can ZIP your files, put them on your Dropbox, click Attach, then Attach from Dropbox, and choose the file.
  3. You can ZIP your files, upload them to any cloud service, create a link to that uploaded file, and paste the link into the problem description.

Locating crash logs

macOS

  1. In Finder menu, choose Go, then Library
  2. Open the Logs subfolder, then DiagnosticReports
  3. In the folder, locate the recent crash log(s) named App Version_Date-Time_Computer.crash, for example FontLab 7_2020-08-29-131606_MacBookPro.crash and move them to the folder where you are collecting the attachments

Windows

Check this article and this article for info about how to locate crash logs/reports on Windows.

Making screenshots

macOS

  1. To make a screenshot of the entire screen, press Shift+Cmd+3
  2. To make a screenshot of a region, press Shift+Cmd+4 and drag the cursor to select the region
  3. By default, your Mac saves the screenshots on your Desktop with the name Screen Shot [date] at [time].png
  4. Move the screenshots to the folder where you are collecting the attachments
  5. For more info see the Apple support page

Windows

  1. To make a screenshot of the entire screen, press the Windows+PrintScreen keys
  2. Go to the Pictures > Screenshots folder, locate the screenshot and move it to to the folder where you are collecting the attachments

Making screen recordings

There are two kinds of screen recordings: small video clips that capture a portion (region) of your screen for a short time, and full-screen recordings that record the action on the whole screen for a longer time, possibly with audio narration. Both are useful. Making small video clips is easier.

Small video clips

To create quick screen recordings, you can use Recordit, a free app for both macOS and Windows. 

  1. Download Recordit, install and run the app
  2. Click the Recordit icon
  3. Drag a frame around the region you’d like to record
  4. Click the icon again
  5. Perform some action
  6. Click the Recordit icon again to stop. 
  7. RecordIt then uploads your video clip to the cloud and copies a URL to the clipboard.
  8. Simply paste the copied URL (which looks like https://recordit.co/D3JLasZOoB ) into the problem description.

Full-screen recordings

macOS

On macOS, you can make full-screen recordings with the built-in QuickTime Player. 

  1. From the Applications folder, start QuickTime Player
  2. From the File menu choose New Screen Recording or press Ctrl+Cmd+N
  3. A small screen recording window appears. Click the little triangle on the right side of the window to adjust microphone and mouse click options
  4. Click the Record button, then click the screen which should be recorded
  5. At the end of the recording, navigate to the right side of the menu bar and click the stop recording button 
  6. Save the result as a .mov in the folder where you are collecting the attachments

Windows

On Windows, you can use oCam Screen Recorder, which is free for non-commercial purposes. 

Installation

You only need to do it once.

  1. Go to the oCam Screen Recorder website and click on the middle EXE oCam Download button.
  2. Run the downloaded setup app named oCam_v515.0.exe or similar.
  3. Review the license agreement and follow the installer instructions. At the end of the setup, the app will display its webpage, which you can close.
  4. Once the setup is complete, run oCam from your Start menu.

Configuration

You only need to do it once.

  1. From the Menu tab, pick Options, and set the configuration as follows:
    • In Record > General, turn on Include the cursor.
    • In Record > Recording area, turn on Hide when recording and Always hide.
    • In Effect > Left-click effect, turn on Add a mouse left click effect and use the slider to set the Animation duration to approximately 0.200 Sec. Set Size to 30.
    • In Effect > Right-click effect, turn on Add a mouse right click effect and use the slider to set the Animation duration to approximately 0.200 Sec. Set Size to 30.
    • In Save, you may pick a different folder to store your screen recordings (by default it’s Documents\oCam).
    • In Hotkeys, you can customize the key which you use to start or stop the screen recording. By default, it’s F2. You can change it to something a bit more unique, like Ctrl+F2, so you don’t activate it by mistake.
    • Click OK to apply your configuation.
  2. In the Screen Recording tab:
    • Click on Sound, and there, disable Record system audio and choose Do not record microphone.
    • Click on Codecs and make sure that Auto Select (first entry) is chosen.
    • Click on Resize and choose Full screen.

Recording

  1. When you’re ready to record your screen action, click on the Record button or press the Record hotkey (F2 or whatever you set in the options).
  2. Switch to the FontLab app where you want your actions to be recorded, and proceed with your normal work.
  3. When you’re done with the recording, press the Record hotkey again, or click on the oCam app in the taskbar and click on the Stop button.
    • This will save an .mp4 screen recording in your Documents\oCam folder (or the folder you’ve specified in the options).
  4. You can open the folder with the recordings by clicking on the Open icon in oCam.
  5. Move the recording to the folder where you are collecting the attachments.

When you close the oCam window, the app will show a dialog box which you can close after a few seconds. Then, it will open a website which you can also close.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should I file a bug report?

File a bug report if you continue to experience an issue with Fontlab software. We can’t fix problems we do not know about, and having good details in a specific report helps us address the issue.

How do I reopen a closed report?

If you see the issue again after your report is closed, just add to the discussion thread of the bug, and that will automatically reopen it for us to review it.